


to come to daylight

by Anonymous



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Mentions of canon typical violence, Mythological Figures Misbehaving, Other, Unwittingly Cuddling With Your Future Enemies, War, speculation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 16:08:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16308407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It is so very like Adaptus to be an awful loser.





	to come to daylight

**Fandom:** Transformers IDW

 **Rating:** Teen

 **Warnings:** Unbeta'd. LL Spoilers up until LL24, written and posted before LL25. Description of a graphic character death scene. Disregards or wildly fudges some IDW canon details the author forgot about while writing this. Pretend in this AU the ‘Knights of Cybertron’ left on their exploration before the god war instead of after it.

 **Relationships:** implied Solomus/Epistemus, implied Primus/Mortilus, implied pre-war Primus/Adaptus

 **Characters:** Rung | Primus, Mortilus | Censere, Solomus | Tyrest, Adaptus, Epistemus

 **Additional Tags:** Mentions of Canon Typical Violence, War, Speculation Fic, Sitcom Drama, Nonhuman Mindset, Solomus Casually Being A Bigot, Adaptus The Resident Warmonger, What If Rung Was An Alien All Along

 **Summary:** The origins of the species is five mechs living together in a tiny building on primal Cybertron, trying not to kill each other while harvesting the cabbage patch of babies outside their doorstep.

 

 

The first elementary particles of the new universe were still cooling when you come loose and came tumbling ungracefully into it, a collection of light and energy bursts.

It was shortly after the big bang—two aeons? Three? You weren’t there as _you_ when the big bang happened so you don’t know but now you _are_ there, in the void between stars.

Deep space.

You expand your core, temporarily loosening the bonds that tie you to the rest of you to spread out better, to take stock of the influx of input and pressure and noise and emissions of particles and electromagnetic waves, tasting nebulas—a newborn star shrieking as it explodes into being and burns into orbit—more stars—globs of something-solid-so-they’re-not-space, you wonder with no particular urgency at them what they are—molecules, matter—hot, shimmering matter, vibrating atoms—a high piercing hum from somewhere else—trembling little quarks in all their bright, dizzy flavors dancing along, filling up what once was nothing.

You startle. It’s not ALL filled up.

Nothingness sucks at you. It is neither cold nor hot. It’s just on the edge of your perception, like a dead thing. Little cracks in time and space’s fabric.

It invites you to come and try your luck to fill it in. It wants you so it can unravel you. A shiver, you retreat and condense back into the bulk of yourself, shrinking, a glowing sphere when seen on five of the lower dimensions of existence, and tendrils of energy pop and flash off you in nervousness. No, no, you’re going to keep away, thank you.

 _[Imperative/function]_ pulses inside you.

It’s not urgent.

You have millennia ahead of you and the universe is raw and young.

You don’t know what pain is. You don’t know what hunger or taste or smell is. If others live outside of yourself, you haven’t met them. You are brightness and sparklight. Unfettered. The only corporal things you have encountered are stray asteroids whizzing past, tiny specks next to your size that tickle if you float in their path, and the somethings-solid-so-they’re-not-space. Time consists of the present: you aren’t aware it can be measured out in a system and broken up into chunks.

There is just the _now_ and the _potential_ of the future. Nothing is urgent to you in the moment. You drift.

What you see, it’s the most wonderful thing since you’re experiencing it for the first time. It’s the most terrifying thing since you have never done it before.

The universe is huge. It has no shortage of novelties.

It distracts you so that doesn’t strike you until a good two million years into your existence that you are... alone.

Correction to this thought: you had instantiated alone, lived alone, and it has honestly not occurred to you to classify this as a _negative/undesired_ quality to your existence before. It was just a fact, devoid of judgement.

You don’t know what to do with this realization.

You set it aside and try to enjoy the sight of a star going supernova in the most spectacular fashion.

But it doesn’t go away.

It forms a weight in your logs. It’s in the four millionth year that it begins troubling you. It gnaws on your mind. A broken code. You have met others now. You have seen some beings who accompany planes even higher than you settling down on planets. You have spoken to them, when you work up the nerve. They were distant but kind enough, courteous, most of them (you avoid the scary ones, the ones with hundreds of roiling mouths and grasping claws and an intellect that looks straight through you: they remind you too much of black holes) and humor your overturns, given you are shy and not that impressive in comparison to them. They are great. They are wise and terrible and awe-inspiring, you believe. You are but a whorl of light.

But they are not companions.

Their natures are not like yours.

You cannot bear to be alone anymore—companionship, company, children, connection, something. Anything. _[Imperative/function]._ It rings through you like a calling.

You venture through star systems and reject planet after planet—this one has the wrong combination of chlorine monoxide, this one was too crumbly, this one was the wrong shape, too sharp, and this one was a cube, and therefore unsuitable since you have your heart set on roundness, this one is too small to fit you, this one had too little of the chemicals and molecules you’re looking for, this one has too _many_ , it’s not that you being finicky or anything like that, it’s just that, this one is a gas planet, this one is already accompanied by inhabitants and you don’t want to intrude, not like that, no, you want to be _welcomed_ , and that means finding...

It’s not the home of others you’re looking for. You’re not an invader.

You’re looking for YOUR home.

And you mean to find it.

There is no rush. The _[imperative/function]_ will not click from dormant to active and drive you to create until the right conditions are there.

You just need to set those conditions up.

 

*********

 

It isn’t perfect, the planet you finally latch onto. Its surface is so many slabs of cracked, cratered rock and wasteland and it rotates at an awkward tilt. It is cold and hostile and barren and its atmosphere is too thin and its gravity weak. Massive space debris fields ring it. It has an unimpressive set of two moons.

It’s not a place most would want anything to do with.

But it’s nice and round, placed next to a young star with a long lifespan ahead of it before it burns out and well away from any pesky gravity wells, and it has rich mineral reserves and deep canyons and caches of molten lava and copper and iron and all the raw materials you need and no pre-existing lifeforms taking up space and using them. You can address the problems.

You’ll have the conditions as you want them.

Burrowing down is easy.

You sink into it, draining yourself into the cracks and past the tectonic layers and the mantle and right down into the darkness of the heart of the planet and nestle in. It’s so _warm_. Contact. Shelter. Safety. You whirl about excitedly, scraping your energy against it. There is thousands of miles worth of planetary rock and crust between you and the open air now. You let yourself melt, dissolve. There was no separation needed between you and the planet. Your energy seeps into its center. It’s all so very _simple_ suddenly.

Around you comes the buzz of molecules rearranging themselves from molten rock into the hard gleam of newly-formed metal and circuitry.

Yes! Yes yes yes.

You spin and rotate, ringing out in concentration, spreading, making yourself comfortable.

It’s going to take a long time. Commitment. You’re in this for the long haul. No more uprooting, no more drifting. Light—light! Light—you want to make this planet light up. You want to share the glow of yourself. You want to click the pieces together and put it in motion. You want _connection_.

You’ll sleep for a bit, to better integrate yourself into the surroundings and collect the stamina you need for the task ahead. Pre-programming in all the timed commands you need to be executed and all the stockpiles you want prepared while you’re under takes a bit, but then that’s done and you whistle in a dozen frequencies a song you picked up on the outer fringe of an asteroid belt as you dwindle down into standby.

 

*********

 

You dream.

 

*********

 

Six vorns later, you slip back into hazy consciousness, all but vibrating in anticipation. The electromagnetic shifts are in the planet’s magnetic field are starting. The tectonic plates are grinding into new positions. The atmosphere was correcting itself to the more desirable status. The core and the mantle have been converted to your metals: the cyberforming tide is creeping through the crust towards the surface.

You’re assembling a shell in the chamber. A computer, your size, the shape of a sphere and it’s going to be _great_. Databanks the size of mountains, miles upon miles of circuits unending and forests of cables hooked into the walls of the shining metal chamber it is cradled inside and sparklight. Sparklight! So potent it could be touched, could be felt as heat on the plates.

You haven’t tried connecting yourself to a physical shell before.

You pause.

Retrace the implications of that thought.

… Maybe you should build in some safeguards. Firewalls. Hard locks. Now that you’re going to handle situations that you can’t simply escape by bumping yourself up a wavelength into the next dimensional plane and out of the reach of danger.

How do you make safeguards again? Where’s the file for that?

Oh dear. Do you _have_ a file for that?

 

*********

 

(There are going to be many, many stories about why you made your first. Most of them will be inaccurate.)

In truth, you make Mortilus because you were lonely.

That weight on you begged for a relief and it was—it’s crazy, that you give into it. Too early. You haven’t met the prerequisites for proper [ _function/execution_ ] and you can’t offer him form—just separation from the whole, like you were separated from the whole.

You had given Cybertron—this planet—a beginning and in doing so, you had understood one day it would have an ending.

From that understanding, you make something new.

He pulls away from [ _you_ ] like a mist, like steam seeping off an oil pool and he says _who?_ in pictures and feelings at you and then he collects himself into a sphere and goes _oh. You. Me. [Image conveying layers of light wrapped around a core in protective guidance]. You AND me?_

 _Yes!_ You say in the same tongue. He reaches out, jagged energy spikes rippling over his field, trying to map out your dimensions. His touch ghosting over you. You let him explore. He glows a lovely color on all spectrums—white, rust-red, crystal blue, metal grey, black like a void. You admire and delight in him. You share that joy with him. It’s good he is here. It is good you’re no longer alone. You hope he’ll feel similarly, but decline to touch past the faint boundaries of his mind to confirm it without a welcome.

Pleasant greeting radiates back at you.

He says _me_ again, but identifies with a vivid modifier picture this time. _Sparked from you, diverged into this self._ _I am… I’m Mortilus_. _You are_. He hums. _Primus_? It’s a question. You turn it into a statement of fact, snipping off the uncertainty modifier to the picture. You broadcast your answer, as sure as rock.

 _It’s Primus, like the [image conveying light eternally moving outward in stages of a circle]_.

Mortilus warms in your direction. _It’s a pleasure to meet you/share this moment with you/to be here._

 

*********

 

Mortilus is with you when you help Vector Sigma to keep working its way towards reformatting the planet’s outermost layer. You talk to each other the whole time, bouncing data pings back and forth in the pitch dark, stellar cycles upon cycles worth of conversation, mind pressed to mind, and if it’s possible to get drunk off the sheer novelty of connection, you manage it.

The universe is young, you are young, he is young, what do you have to fear from this sweet, unrestrained sharing?

To be heard! To be seen! To be remembered!

Mortilus has opinions that aren’t yours and thoughts that are just his and interests he drifts away into and you—like listening to him.

You show him blueprints you’ve been carrying, the technology for the removal and reformation of molecules from one pocket of subspace to another; for the implantation of sparks into living metal; the math behind disregarding gravity’s tug; the designs of wheels and claws and wings and outliers and Titans taller than mountains and treads and cogs.

He’s prepared to help.

 

*********

 

Adaptus, dear Adaptus. Adaptus you made as a challenge to yourself, to test if you could replicate the kind of separation from [ _you_ ] into [ _new being_ ] you had done with Mortilus. He was pulsed out like an electrical discharge and there was a moment of stillness, him holding his mass taut as he took in his circumstances, his fellows, recognised he existed as himself for the first time.

You want to adore him like you adore Mortilus.

So you’re the one reaches out to him first, with that hope, and he reaches back immediately. You meet and find no friction in it, set up no barrier between you and him.

Trust, firm and thorough.

 _I am [image conveying ever-changing light advancing forward in many forms]_ he says in a surge of confidence. _I know you, Primus. I do._

_Then all is well._

Adaptus’s attention shifts to Mortilus. _And who are_ — _[signifier of realization/ah]?_ _Aha. You/follow divergence from the source/fellow spark. Greetings_. _Do you know me?_

Mortilus puts out his own tendril of crackling energy in a friendly hello. _Of course._

 

*********

 

Adaptus is the one who brings your attention to the tiny specks scuttling over Cybertron’s surface. He spends more time monitoring the outermost layer through Vector Sigma than you or Mortilus ever cared to.

His mind approaches on yours in a request and you come over to where his presence fills a section of the core’s endless purity, coiling in next to him so you can overlap each other. Snagging streams of data into his grasp, Adaptus twines them together and shows you a visual display, saying _observe_.

_Observe what?_

_Don’t play dumb/foolish. Observe._

You puff up sheepishly. _I’m not playing._ _I don’t actually know what I’m supposed to looking at here, Adaptus. Sorry, it looks the same to me. [Invitation to explain]?_

Unlike Mortilus, Adaptus rarely stayed one hue long—he flashes lazily through dozens, iridescent green, blue, red, white, purple, yellow, orange, smeared together. You could watch him for hours and see something new slipping to the surface swirls and dipping back out of view each time. He glows bright blue in slow-building excitement now, like a storm pinned in place.

_I believe my scans have revealed there’s life outside._

_[?????]_

It’s a stew of incredulity from your corner until you can finally, if you push yourself, look at the data stream and separate the small moving bits from their surroundings and recognize them as _something_ other than just part of the landscape like you’d assumed them to be.

The tiny creature scurrying along had been indistinguishable from the rock around it to you until Adaptus points it out. It creeps, belly plates flush to the ground before it pounces on something smaller and brittle.

Its jaw snaps shut.

_When did this happen? When did they get here?_

_I didn’t do this. So whenever you made energy available on the surface, I suppose, Primus. They used it._

You do know that when you reformatted the planet, that entailed a release of energy, in addition to the energy emitting from Cybertron’s closest star. But you hadn’t anticipated… You hadn’t intended...

It’s an embarrassing oversight.

And now that you’re looking at the results, now that the idea’s trickling in your mind—those new odd numbers and entries in parts of Vector Sigma’s once-per-century global status reports that you’ve been attributing to other factors. This is the culprit.

There are metallic growths splotched on the undersides of metal overhangs. They drip oil. Glittering pillars jut up in rows next to rivers of raw energon. One of the small creatures nibbles on a facet.

Fascination spears through Adaptus’ field. In his own brusque way, he sounds in awe.

_They used it and they evolved. Imagine what they might become if we give them time to grow._

 

*********

 

You’re relieved when you show the memory to Mortilus and he has the same problem telling the little creatures apart from the landscape as you had without Adaptus nudging you. It’s not _just_ you it doesn’t come naturally to.

 

*********

 

Now that you’ve gained knowledge of how it works and the practice to do it, the process is executed smoothly.

You split off Solomus and Epistemus from [ _you_ ] in tandem, so fast you cannot tell them later which one came free first when Epistemus asks you. They felt like gears popping out of place: Epistemus’ surface bubbled thickly and swirled like oversaturated plasma as he bobbed up and down as he worked out which way was up and which was down.

Solomus rather looked like the outside of a glass marble, unnaturally smooth, glossy, contracted into himself.

They try to introduce themselves to you and Adaptus and Mortilus at the same time too, Epistemus piping [ _image conveying light rotating around a core in understanding of light_ ] as his self-identification happily and Solomus beaming out [ _image conveying light protruding upward in sharply designated patterns_ ] which results in Epistemus getting annoyed Solomus is trying to speak over him which leads to Solomus indignantly claiming he had started speaking astroseconds _before_ Epistemus had, therefore _he_ had the right of speaking and it was Epistemus who was in the wrong, and he should wait his turn to address Primus. Dumbstruck, Epistemus slowly curdles into a disbelieving white.

Then he rallies.

Thus commenced Vector Sigma’s first shouting match.

It takes Mortilus twisting around Epistemus and towing him away to cool off, and you and Adaptus seizing Solomus’s presence, hauling him in the opposite direction and convincing him to think about _why_ Epistemus was upset, to restore peace and quiet.

You think better of Solomus for immediately wishing to apologize and make peace between him and Epistemus. Whatever Mortilus says to Epistemus works: he floats back, willing to talk if Solomus is willing to say sorry.

 

*********

 

Solomus is intrigued when it comes up so you talk him through the protocols and the mechanics behind the recycling program. You were open to suggestions for fine-tuning, you explain, though the credit for the debugging process went to Mortilus. He had patched dozens of holes you had missed. You gave him the administration rights long ago.

The fragments would be sent up to the hot spots on the surface, ignite, be harvested, grow, live, change, learn, build, and then one day, like all things, they would be extinguished. They would end, and upon ending, the fragments would be pulled back into where they had began, back to Cybertron’s core, back to the well of sparklight, back to their origin. They would be retrieved.

Inside, the processing sequence would flare to life and the data collected by the fragments would be sent further in. The experiences, the alt modes, the upgrades, the frames it went through, the other sparks it touched, data that Vector Sigma would use while adjusting for the parameters of the next generation.

Life outside was hard.

So while in Vector Sigma’s embrace, the fragments would be safe, soothed, protected, sheltered, warmed, cleansed, healed. This would ensure they wouldn’t take anything that shouldn’t be in Vector Sigma into it. An anti-contamination protocol.

Once a fragment judged itself ready, it would join back with the whole and one day it would be reused. The cycle would begin anew.

 _These fragments you speak of/plan for_ , Solomus muses, running long arcs of energy down the empty data cache’s rim. _Are they going to be like [us]?_

_Clarify._

_[clarification] Are they going to have minds/selves? I cannot imagine it. It’s like trying to picture there being more than one of you. Are there going to be hundreds more Mortiluses in the future? Horrifying._

Your field twings. You don’t hide the sputter.

 _[Picture conveying misunderstanding] No, no, no, that’s not it! There are more than five possible personalities/minds/selves/modes! There is so much more than that! We are going to be different from them, but…_ They _will be so much more than us!_

Any fragment—any of your children—would be unrepeatable and remarkable—each one would be an unique existence no matter how it came into the world. Once separated, it couldn’t be replicated.

He turns green like acid.

_My mistake. Forgive me._

You do, of course… Of course.

 

*****

 

Vector Sigma is vast.

It miraculously has reached the point where it feels cramped anyway.

You overlap each other and wander in and out of each others’ minds like houses when you’re not dreaming or entangled in coding patches. Mortilus rummages through your memories, dazzled by the sight of a galaxy light years away from Cybertron being born. Adaptus’ latest project is adjusting the production of energon. He dreams of empty cities and the moons spinning in orbit around Cybertron. They seep out of him and intrude on you.

The prerequisites have been met. The conditions you desired are ready. Vector Sigma was completed: it practically ran itself and ran the planet and it would continue to do so in your… prolonged absence. You are surplus parts to it. You aren’t _necessary_. What excuse did you have for dithering? None.

But there’s four others to take into account.

You wouldn’t force them to come with you.

You want to be clear about that from the start.

They didn’t have to follow your lead. They could chose to remain in Vector Sigma.

 _Why do you want to trap yourself/your light in a physical shell?_ Adaptus asks, sounding a mixture of genuinely curious and rather miffed, and Solomus makes it plain he finds the concept of deigning to give up their current status and encase their essence in... materials foolish. Mortilus itches to go and see the new activity that had evolved on the surface up-close, and Epistemus is a clicking flood of questions, overrunning Adaptus before you can answer him: _why is a fine question and all, but more specifically where would you put the shell after uploading into it, do you have a particular location in mind, what do you plan to do once you’re up there, how long would it take before you come back_ —

_I wouldn’t._

_What?_

_Pardon?_

_Huh?_

_Come back, I mean. I would be gone for a long, long time. I would never be able to access Vector Sigma like I can now. If you came… You wouldn’t either._

They withdraw into a cluster without you and hold council.

 _We are all one_ , says Mortilus finally after the discussion you will never be privy to is over, speaking for the others. _If one of us goes, shouldn’t the rest of us come along?_

 

*****

 

Epistemus runs the calculations and he agrees with you. On the timescale you propose, pre-programming the number of sparks, the timing and spacing out the pulse waves sent up to ignite the hot spots should keep the population stable and growing without straining Cybertron’s resources.

There ought to be enough on Cybertron for everybody to be content.

To be _happy_.

 

*****

 

You opt for a simple design for the frame, slim, orange, stripped down to the mechanical basics. Modest.

It (hopefully) reflects well on you. You don’t want to put on airs.

 

*****

 

The bare bedrock of Cybertron, clouds of stars blazing unobscured overhead—

Flat on your back with the soft metal of your frame cooling and your mouth parted, cycling in and out air, you stare upward with your new optics and decide this moment makes everything worth it.

 

*****

 

After breaking through the bedrock, Mortilus’ spark pulses, tenderly cupped in your hands. You set it down somewhere safe and leave him to the business of shaping his frame around it. Unlike the sparklings, he will not need tending to assume the shape his coding wants.

You go back to coax Epistemus and Adaptus out and up. Trotting back to Mortilus with them close cradled to your chest as the glow washes over your face, you’re gratified that Mortilus has built outward into a disembodied torso and the piable protoform nubs sticking out of it are in the right spots for limbs. A third trip around rewards you: Solomus’s spark is pried out too, just in time for Epistemus to start developing curves and wheels, and for the plating on Adaptus’ chest to harden into pale blue blocks and straight angles.

 

*****

 

The moment the last plates on his wings are flight-ready, Solomus’s engine revs; he’s two hundred feet in the air with a snap of air filling the empty space where he’d been and already well on his way to shrinking to a dot in the distance before a klik is up. The blast of wind buffets you. Adaptus lifts a brow in the dot’s direction, yellow optics narrowing. He towers over you three. He’d had to add on the extra bulk to accommodate his two alt modes—while the rest of you only had the one.

 _There’s going to be an electrical storm soon_ , you call after the jetformer. _Don’t go up so high. It’s dangerous. Come closer to us. Come closer. Come back. Please?_

Solomus directs down a data ping _a moment if you would, I desire to stretch my wings_.

“Afthead,” Epistemus says cheerily, without actual rancor. “Stretching his wings? He didn’t wait for the rest of us to test our alt modes.” He looks at you. “Hey. Nice eyebrows, Primus.”

“Thank you,” you say, pressing your fingers together. You think they make you look dignified.

“Solomus has his helm in the atmosphere,” Mortilus says. He flexes his claws experimentally.

Epistemus and Mortilus are looping circles around each other in alt mode with no hint at Solomus’ return from his joy flight when Adaptus loses patience.

“ _I’ll_ fetch him. He doesn’t know the terrain any more than we do. He can’t have gone far in the dark.” Adaptus transforms in a flurry of twisting metal and shoots into the sky after him, leaving a vapor trail in his wake.

"Don't get lost!" you shout after him.

Folding back up into root mode in a series of clicks and whirs and gears sliding together, Mortilus comes to stand next to you. Your friend points towards the steadily brightening line burning on the horizon. “It’s not going to be dark for too long.”

Dawn comes.

The sun is rising on Cybertron. You can see nothing else.

 

*****

 

One of you starts a fire that night and the group huddles around it, you pressing up against Epistemus. He leans back. Everybody is scuffed up and dirty from tromping around on unsteady legs and learning the finer mechanics behind being subject to gravity. Hands folded on his lap, Mortilus slumps onto Adaptus, deep into a recharge cycle. Adaptus’ optics are offline. Solomus minds the fire. He and Epistemus are talking softly about what tomorrow will be.

For a klik or ten you look at the lines of their face plates bathed in the fire’s red glow.

The rise and fall of their vocalizers.

The fire popping and crackling.

When you slip into recharge, file after scrolling file of the instructions for making metallo-dielectric nanostructures dances behind your optics. Photonic crystals rain down from the sky.

 

*****

 

It takes eight ruined campsites in a row, two electrical storms, one encounter with acid rain (which your self-healing leaves you as unbothered as if you were taking an oil bath but everybody else recoiling and hissing in pain at acid biting into them) that leaves them hiding in a cave, and three cyclones before the unanimous consensus is that they need shelter. _Proper_ shelter.

The small shelter they erect, according to the digital schematics produced through Adaptus and Solomus’ bickering and pinged to the other bots’ comms, is…

Well, it remains standing. Somehow. You’re not sure how. Magic? Feverish prayer? You shouldn’t question it. It’s upright. It keeps them out of the acid rain.

 

*****

 

When nobody’s paying attention, you sneak out back behind the jury-rigged energon distiller and make the Matrix, your alt mode lying amidst used cubes and scrap metal.

 

*****

 

Megacycles after their emergence, the mechs who would be called the Guiding Hand of Cybertron get utterly rip-roaringly, blindly drunk.

By accident.

This is Epistemus’ fault: he had been experimenting on how to mix together new compounds to refine energon and filter out the impurities for a higher grade to fuel themselves better. Due to them being the only five mechs alive on the whole planet, his test subjects were everybody living with him, then himself once they seemingly kept it down in their fuel tanks with no ill effects. You being the leader of your motley crew doesn’t spare you from this.

By the time it swims up from your tank and hits your processor, you’re four drinks in and can’t formulate a reason why it might be best to stop sipping at a fifth.

You’re swaying. Visuals have fragmented into a mosaic of blurry colors and spinning lights.

Mortilus’ arm slings over your shoulder. He’s laughing, talking. Quietly, vents clattering. He’s moving slowly. You’re laughing too, you don’t pause to blearily figure out why. You try not to spill your drink when you wrap an arm around his waist—wrap your electromagnetic field over him too. He’s warm and the soundtrack of his frame whirring along, keeping his spark contained, reverberates into you.

Sitting on the floor to keep a scattering of empty cubes company, Adaptus and Epistemus are playing a game with their hands, palms clapping together and fingers clumsily interlocking.  Adaptus scoffs at a comment from his friend. You’re unclear on the rules or how one gets declared the winner.

You don’t know if there is a need for a winner at all.

Propped up against the berth, one leg bent and the other leg flat on the floor, and flimy gaze straying from a hole in the ceiling, Solomus saves you from asking, by drunkenly demanding if they were playing an ACTUAL game or just making up the rules as they went along?

Epistemus has the coherence left to tell him to shut up.

The game ends. You don’t ask who won. Drinking continues. With the impeccable logic of somebody truly intoxicated, you shepard them outside. It’s a lovely night. You're surrounded by friends. Why waste it? They sit on a barren ridge and invent a new game of tracing out and naming all the constellations they can see in the sky from this part of the hemisphere.

You insist one arrangement of stars to the north uncannily looks like and therefore should be called _Mortilus’ Nose_. Mortilus argues with you about this. Nursing his drink, Epistemus sides with Mortilus. You’re crestfallen.

Solomus breaks up the disagreement by changing the subject and pointing out a constellation he deems the obvious outline of a _Upside-Down Turbofox_.

 

*****

 

At the morning light stabbing needles into your optics, you groan pitifully, face scrunching up. A haze of static swamps you. You regret everything. Why did you convince yourself taking a physical frame was a swell idea? You’re _dying_. You’re dying, dying, dying. You should have stayed in Vector Sigma. Your processor is splitting apart, your circuits twisting into knots. Why did Adaptus think it was a smart idea to include windows in his architectural plans? Why? To let sunshine in? What a bad idea. You reset your vocalizer and announce to the room at large your impending demise. “I’m going to offline.”

Somebody rolls over and moans at the noise. Shuffling. A hand gropes about, seizes a rock and chunks it at the window, aiming at the light outside uselessly. It _tinks_ off. It’s a minor consolation that the room at large is as miserable as you are.

“S…— Stop _talking_.”

Whimpering, you curl up and clap both hands over your face and attempt to force your helm to stop _pounding_. Your voice cracks. “I’m going to offline _right now_.”

“Not before Epistemus does,” somebody mutters darkly. “Wha…— What did he PUT in the energon?”

“Argh.”

“Ghghn _ugh_."

Another voice rasps. “ _Thought I_ told _‘ou to stop_ talking.”

You lose consciousness. When you wake, standing up takes ages and clinging to the wall with both hands to steady yourself. The headache has diminished: nausea warns you of what your fuel tank wants to do. A headcount reveals Mortilus draped facedown on the lone berth, a streak of coolant running down from the corner of his mouth to his chin into a puddle. Out cold in his alt mode parked in a corner, there’s scratches swirling up and down Adaptus’ paintwork. Solomus recharges on the floor. He looks like he got into an argument with a mountainside and lost. Epistemus is missing.

Staggering outside to purge your tanks, you find him sprawled across the shelter’s dingy roof, cuddling an empty cube. Energon stains have dried into a bright pink crust down the front of his chest plating. How did he get up there? Epistemus can’t fly.

A mystery to wait for _after_ you go dunk your helm into the nearest natural oil pools so it stops spinning when you try walking for too long. Then you’re fixing your self-healing ability so that you never have to deal with this dreadful sensation _ever_ again.

 

*****

 

Mortilus gets up too late and purges his tanks onto the berth while you’re trying to heft him upright to get outside. You sit with him and pat him on the back in sympathy for his hangover.

 

*****

 

The nursery buildings are your chief concern now that the main shelter is done.

If you had the mechpower to heave up every wall and screw in every bolt and lay out the landing strips and put railings around the creche playareas by your lonesome, you would, _that’s_ how eager you are. The Matrix rattles around in your subspace.

Since you don’t, you just need to pull their helms out of their exhaust pipes and convince Adaptus and Solomus of the logic behind connecting one wing of the nursery to the oil pools so the boat sparklings will have somewhere safe to swim and play in their alt modes after they grow into protoforms.

They aren’t as close to the sea as they could be.

 

*****

 

Adaptus is the first berthmate everybody in the group vies for a turn with when his and their recharge cycles overlapped: his large triple-changer frame put off much more heat in the nighttime chill than his smaller companions, and the deep rumble of his engines idling sent nice vibrations through plating. Curled up on top of him with one of his arms wrapped around you, you are safe.

“Can we pull this off?” you ask, the blue light of your optics shining in the middle of the night.

Adaptus’s optics are dimmed. “You haven’t expressed doubts about our undertaking before, Primus.”

You press a hand onto the smooth metal underneath you and rub it in idle circles.

“It’s not that.” You say and for once, you can’t swallow back your insecurities. “I’m anxious. This will be big. We can’t take it back. What if we’re not up to the task? What if _I’m_ not up to the task? The sparklings—”

Adaptus grunts.

“You’re the leader and you told us you’re happy for the sparklings. That you wished they would emerge sooner.”

“It’s because of that, I want to do right by them!” You snap. Your mouth flattens into a thin line.

Adaptus lets the silence grow.

The walls enclosing them are barely visible in the gloom.

“I never doubt my course is right,” Adaptus says. “Since we were here first, the next generation will need _our_ guidance. As it is our duty to show them the way. We will be their guiding hand, in a sense, into a bright future. There’s nobody better suited than us for it. Primus, they’ll thank us for it.” His arm tightens around your narrow waist. It creaks. You can’t stop yourself from tensing for a klik before you relax and lean into it in trust. “Crease fretting. Go back to sleep already.”

 

*****

 

The first of Cybertron’s hot spots the group finally find ignites when you jump down and your feet touch its surface. A generation spills up out of the bedrock. A field of new sparks. Wet and soft and trembling and silvery and warm and unformed.

 

*****

Harvesting and ferrying the newborns in batches to the nurseries takes the coordinated efforts of all five of you. Registering the serial codes, making the crystals, gently, gently placing the newborns into cradles, sorting which sparklings from which part of the birthing field get housed where because Solomus insists on there being a _method_ to it so they can keep track of the creches, tending them, rushing to the latest wailing (or buzzing) outburst breaks the air from a sparkling in need of hugging and cooing and attention, and you, Epistemus, and Mortilus usually end up providing that.

Because Adaptus studiously avoids that aspect of the process like a plague and Solomus froze up like a tall, overgrown green stalagmite when it’s his turn to do it. You take pity on him and volunteer for half of his shifts.

And there’s so many of them. Solomus and Epistemus go to sweep the field and check again for stragglers that might have been overlooked. Pinching his nose, Adaptus mutters they’re going to need to throw up another set of building for the nurseries at this rate.

Now this:

You’re reading off a datapad to the blocky sparkling nestled in the crook of your arm.

You discovered early on you can’t _teach_ them the language of pure emotion and images you spoke back in Vector Sigma—you settle for a rough translation. Harsh glyphs, short sentences. Stories that don’t have endings. Circles that go on forever. Light, then darkness, then light again.

The sparkling is too new to understand: it’s the stimulation that’s good for her in this stage. A vocalizer raising and falling. A gentle touch. The sparkling can’t see you; her optics haven’t developed yet. Her exposed circuitry lines twitch, her little field rippling. You lilt your words. She beeps sleepily.

Beside your chair, one of the screwed-together cradles in the room—three other sparklings piled and snuggled up with each other atop soft padding, an occasional content peep escaping. This little one had kept crying even after her fellows slipped into recharging until you shuffled in through the door, and your hands had descended to fish her out.

The rest of the Guiding Hand is done for the night.

You’re the last one still up.

You trail off, eyes half-shuttered when her field steadies at last. Dropping the datapad into one of your frame’s hidden compartments, you stand up. You lower her down and the sparkling squirms back into the pile once you let her go. Silhouetted by the yellow block of light from the door you left open, you look them over wistfully. These little cubes and spheres and triangles and lumps and discs are going to grow up. Eventually. Soon.

Sooner or later, everybody must grow up.

(“Live,” you whisper. “Live, and be good to yourselves and be good to each other.”)

 

*****

 

Adaptus tends to the medcenter that springs up shortly after the protoforms are mobile to the point they can move on their own. The impulse to run and jump and drive and dent their armor and roughhouse and fly and fall and scrape the paint off their knees and then repeat the cycle again doesn’t go away when they’re forged into their adult frames.

That’s why you’re delighted to give your permission as the leader when Adaptus comes to you and requests to train the more gifted mechs for his field, along with plans to relocate his base of operations to outside the nursery to leave more room for the newborns. He isn’t content to stagnate. He deserves a reward. You support him.

He moves out.

Epistemus soon spirits away a group of his favorites once they’re big enough for you to agree they can leave the nest—they’re planning on constructing a stronghold close by too and compiling the facts of everything they know about Cybertron and themselves, sorting the quantities of data into an accessible format. They’re going to call it a ‘library,’ Solomus scoffs, flicking his wings, telling you at length of Epistemus’ latest ‘pedro-rabbit-chasing’ passion project over a cube. You hum and nod at the right points to pretend you’re listening as you coax a protoform off your lap to go play with the others in the playarea.

Solomus, not to be outdone, had announced grandly that he and HIS favored mechs would be departing soon as well: they would construct a city devoted to the sciences, learning its laws for the betterment of the Cybertronian race. As you have a functioning processor, you nod and wisely don’t mention that the location he picked was _suspiciously_ close to Epistemus’ library.

You stay.

You run the nurseries. You care for the little ones and raise them. Mortilus helps with that. Mechs grow up and move out. Some go to Epistemus. Other to Solomus or Adaptus. But not all of them. Some stay. With you. They build shelters in the lands around the nursery. Rough roads are laid out to keep in touch with the cities. Infrastructure sprouts. Mechs volunteer as caretakers to the little ones. Parties go out to fetch the spark harvests from the latest hot spots and bring them back to you for approval and protection. You don’t notice its expansion for what it is.

It takes Mortilus explaining that on the three separate pairs of conjunx eduras approaching you on the same day to bless their bonding isn’t _just_ because you’re Primus but also because of your _status_ , to realize you’ve accidentally gone from the leader of a group of five mechs to the head of the nurseries to the ruler of a city. The city where everybody is raised, where everybody comes from.

You’re sorely tempted to lock yourself into your rooms and not come out.

 

*****

 

When Mortilus asks to go and take the mechs who aligned with him to the unoccupied spot on the map holo-projection his finger presses onto, you’re selfish: for an astrosecond, you want to tell him _no, stay with me._

You delete that response and say yes. You’re the leader. What you want as a person shouldn’t… can’t come first.

Of all their domains, you think his is the finest. Mortilus’ group rise a city filled with crystal gardens and arching bridges and a tangle of underground walkways, lined with glowing crystal spires to light the way. Mortilus harbors an interest in things that bore Adaptus and that Solomus pays little heed to, like art and music and fabrics. Colorful installations. Lights. Stone carvings.

He sends pictures back, tagging on commentary on this new road being opened or the new cultivation method he was trying for that subgrouping of crystals. You appreciate that.

 

*****

 

“Where’s our dear font of all knowledge?” Adaptus asks without looking up from where he was deftly peeling off the plating off in the hand of the mech he had unconscious on the med slab.

The door hisses shut behind you.

“Epistemus will be along in a moment.”

Adaptus’ face is hidden from you. “He can’t put off his medical appointment forever.”

Whistling, you lean around his bulk to peer at the sensor-laden replacement parts lined up on the table, then at the dissected hand. He tips the hand and clinically shows you the insides, the soft gleam of the flaps of protoform he’s cut open. “You see, Primus? You have to mold and reconfigure the birth metal itself to get the right degree of sensitivity to increased input. Then you build the plating on to match the altered protoform, to ensure the highest range of flexibility.”

Your frame’s unique capacity to sew itself back together means you don’t come to the medcenter much except when Adaptus requests you come in for research purposes, and therefore a lot of what Adaptus is yammering on about goes over your helm. Something about finally being able to refine the rebuilding technology and melding natural protoform to foreign metal, and a possible application of it to the modifications of T-Cogs, allowing for more alt modes to be used.

You inspect the tankformer on the next slab in the room and see both of her hands have stripped down to the protoform and peeled open too. “You’re replacing just their hands? Why?”

“They wished to switch careers after a... shared friend of theirs was damaged in a traffic accident and nearly offlined when they couldn’t, how _did_ they put it? ‘When they couldn’t do anything to help,’“ Adaptus jerks an indifferent thumb at the mech he’s working on, then at the second mech. “This one was forged as a racer, this one was a miner. So they needed upgrades to meet my standards and they'll be as good of medics as anyone if they pass the classes. The rest of it, their paintjobs, my staff can handle for them. I don't need to be there for that. I gave them what they wanted.”

“That’s kind of you, Adaptus. It sounds like a delicate operation.”

“They follow me. They belong to me,” Adaptus says, inscrutable. “I am only rewarding devotion.”

(A thought Adaptus doesn’t share: _It is interesting that pain motivated them to change_.)

 

*****

 

States of change. You, catching a glimpse of Adaptus on the little-used sparring field, learning how to break others. The whole body into a broken body. Adaptus in the repairs bay, learning how to piece them back together. The broken body into the whole body, back and forth, back and forth. Control over each step. Destroy a building to see how it falls apart, then learn how to stack up the structure of a building. The point, the thing that captured Adaptus’ fancy, was less the final product and more the _transition_. 

The burn of parts forced to keep up.

You want to make things: not destroy them. You are unchanging, and Adaptus is as changeable as the wind in deeds, though as slow as a tectonic plate in beliefs.

There’s newfound friction between you, two parts who don’t align.

(Perhaps you should have seen the ending writ out, even then. But you don’t.)

 

*****

 

“—And no, Solomus isn’t here, and no, we’re _not_ talking. Pit, I don’t have anything to say to arrogant oafs who can’t take a criticism of their _latest_ teleportation theory and stride around with their big orange _chin_ in the air, like they’re Vector Sigma’s gift to Cybertron. Hmph.” Epistemus snatches a cracked datapad off the floor. His back kibble quivers. You politely don’t bring up that you heard him stuffing his interface cables back inside their panels an instant before you walked in nor that you caught the telltale roar of hypersonic jet engines streaking out the back rooms fifteen kliks ago. Or that the office still smells like warm metal and lingering ozone. You strongly suspect the reason Solomus hasn’t proposed the four rites to Epistemus is that it would be socially improper for them to keep up their routine trysts of breaking up and getting back together every other century if they were conjunx.

“I understand.” You squint at a speck of rust on your glasses and scrub at it with your thumb. “But regarding the set of _Checkpoint’s Volt Cat Tales For Protoforms…_?”

Epistemus’s helm swivels to face you, plating fluffing out.

“ _That’s_ here! Definitively! No doubt about that. I took them out of the shelves after you sent in a request. I just can’t remember where I… Give me a klik.”

He vanishes behind one of the stacks of datapads on his desk. And on the windowsill. And under the desk. And marched up to invade the walls and spill across the floor, backed up by a tide of loose half-empty polish bottles, styluses, and dust. The floor’s a mess.

A colony of turbofoxes could set up shop in an untidied corner of the office, under one of the tables and frankly, Epistemus probably wouldn’t notice a single thing amiss until they tried eating him alive.

Epistemus runs his library with an iron fist, but none of that discipline translates into his personal habits. What does that say about him? You’d think it would repulse Solomus; and yet. Epistemus is the one element of disorder Solomus tolerates in his life. It’s been awhile since you talked to him. Solomus. Another crack in the group you led. The god-rulers of the other cities answer to you as the final authority, but you don't micromanage. You let them handle the affairs inside their own domains. It keeps all five of you busy. Solomus is pompous and uptight and ridiculous and cannot keep his nose out of other people’s business if it kills him. He is also devoted and intelligent and one of the only four other mechs who are like you. There will not be any more. That gets him leeway. You should try talking to him regularly again, if only to keep the peace. It’s what friends do.

 

*****

 

The Titan lifts you up and up and up and up in his giant palm. Around him, the silhouettes of other Titans crowd in.

**FIRST-SPARKED, LIGHT-BRINGER. GOD-RULER. FOREBEARER. PRIMUS.**

You wave and lay down your staff to the side. “Metroplex.” He lets you unspool a connection cord from your wrist and plug in.

 

*****

 

Seated on the edge of the berth you shared for the night, Mortilus ex-vents. “You give and give so easily,” he says, both of his clawed hands folded over one of yours. “And others take without thinking about giving _back_. I worry about your limits. Hold back a little for yourself, if you would?”

 

*****

 

The tournament for the celebrations you went to visit Mortilus for has been running for five days. It’s noisy, it’s loud. They hold festivals in your honor now. Festivals for each member of the Guiding Hand, festivals for the Titans, festivals for the start of the year, for the Day of Creation, the Day of Death, the Day of Transformation, the Day of Learning, the Day of Skills, for your blessing of energon. For warm shelters, smooth roads, races won.

There is always more than enough energon. There is always wide spaces to speed across and new things to be found. Nobody can imagine running out of either.

Under your uncontested rule of the planet, utopia.

Everyone is content and so are you.

 

*****

 

Perched on the stairs of the small open air courtyard in a glass flower garden in Mortilus’ city, you pull the Matrix out of subspace and wrap your arms around it, cuddling it close, syncing your field to its energy and letting yourself be soothed. The frame you chose has a chassis too narrow to comfortably house it. You did that on purpose.

The temptation to keep it to yourself forever is too great otherwise.

The Matrix was your cheat code, your master emergency override, your extra creation key, your moment of linking through it back to Vector Sigma, of being able to close your physical optics and see truly all the sparks pulsing around you as what they are.

It’s a shadow of what you could see as part of Vector Sigma—it is still enough.

You should share that glimpse instead of hogging it. You _should_.

On its cool metal, your fingers curl tighter.

 

*****

 

The young one, freshly integrated into their adult frame, you catch red-handed after they unerringly sneak after you in alt mode through three city trips no matter what tricks you try to hide your trail, finally transforms into root mode and takes a step back. You give them an even look. They stare at their feet and mutter.

You fold your arms sternly.

They stutter out louder that… that the Matrix sings to them. They feel a tug. A pull. They don’t know. They can’t _help_ it. They only wanted to understand, they didn’t mean to get on Primus’ circuits, they just... Their visor is as lovely and stunningly blue as its core when they rise it to look you in the face. You reset your optics, your hand pressing up against your chest.

You hesitate, then offer them what sings to them.

And for a moment, they sing together in harmony in front of you, Matrix and mech.

“That… that was wonderful,” breathes the first Prime before they shakily hand it back, visor leaking light filaments, trembling fingers sprayed across their face mask. Their hand lingers on its casing before reluctantly pulling away. “I, wow! That was amazing, Primus, thank you, _thank you_ for letting me be one with it!”

 

*****

 

When the first exploration members leave in their Titans and their handful of spacefaring ships, you are present to lead the ceremony in the spaceport to bid them farewell. You even make yourself put on a (shudder) cape. It’s infrequent now that the whole of the god-rulers of the Guiding Hand was together (you’ve grown apart since your first days in that tiny shelter with them and you can’t pretend the rift isn’t there, and you still haven’t talked to Solomus recently)—but they’re gathered with you too, Mortilus, Adaptus, Solomus, Epistemus (though Epistemus looked like still halfway through a recharge cycle, large optic dimmed) seeing them off.

The crowd is in as high spirits as the exploration members who come from all over Cybertron to board the ships and take to the stars. Conjunxes embrace one last time, promising to return to their beloveds with stories of the cosmos, schoolmates slap each other on the back, mechs pass out goodies, a work group shakes hands before their engineer goes up the gangway, a minibot is playing music, a trine swoops past overhead, throngs of mecha are singing songs about the glory of Cybertron, two missionaries walk arm-in-arm into a Titan, an entire cohort of scientists are huddled below the gangway in heavy, excited debate.

The expedition has big dreams: to map the stars, to spread enlightenment, to meet new species, to see new things, to change and to be changed in return.

You’re not paying attention to what the other god-rulers say for their parts in the ceremony. You step up, you say the expected words. You bless their journey. You tell them they do Cybertron and you honor with their bravery. (You wonder, again, if it’s enough. If you’re up to this task to letting them grow up and go on without your guidance.)

The exploration leader steps forward, going down on one knee to receive your well-wishes.

You press the Matrix into their hands.

“No matter how far you go from home, no matter how distant Cybertron grows behind your backs,” you promise, “The Matrix will lead you back. Always.”

 

*****

 

The Matrix comes back, a map written into it, but the exploration members don’t come back with it. Glasses set to the side, you trace the glowing glyphs of the map with your blunt fingers and follow them to the destination. A glyph for ‘utopia’ merged with the glyph for ‘Cyberton.’

Worry twists its way through your spark casing.

This is no such place as ‘Cybertopia.’

 

*****

 

There are festivals. There are interstellar trade voyages with the species on neighboring planets. There are less expeditions. Cybertronians stay on Cybertron. It’s rare for them to venture further than two star systems away from the home planet. The space stations constructed become abandoned.

 

*****

 

“War? _War_ ?” Solomus’ lip curls in haughty disgust when he throws up his hands and walks away from Adaptus to stand with you, Mortilus, and Epistemus. “War is below us. It’s an affair for the likes of organic _savages_. There’s nothing in those fleshling races worth emulating! Have you taken leave of your senses?”

Epistemus crackles in agreement. The noise freezes in his vocalizer when Adaptus shoots him a sharp glare.

 

*****

 

When Adaptus sees it’s the final ruling of three and Primus against one, and turns on you, the first thing he levels to the ground is Epistemus’ library: his army’s opening blow. Epistemus’ staticked howl of grief when he sees the video feed of the ruins tells you it struck home.

 

*****

 

Adaptus wants war. He gets it.

It goes like wars always do. Too many dead bodies, so many broken sparks. You hate it.

 

*****

 

Mortilus’ crystal gardens are wiped off Cybertron during the last stages of the war.

 

*****

 

In hindsight, Solomus’ baseless delusion that Cybertronians were too enlightened to wage war is one you envy him for: you can’t lie to yourself that flawlessly. It might have made the war easier to bear if you could treat it like a blip on the radar.

 

*****

 

When the four of you bring him down, it’s a group effort to tear him limb from limb so he can’t transform and escape like he has the half-dozen times before you’ve cornered him.

You know the exact places on a mech to hit to make them fall, no need for flourishes or showing off. You disassemble him. Your staff ramming into his shoulder; Epistemus wrenching open his helm in a shriek of crumpled metal and dislocating the entirety of his other shoulder before there’s a massive spray of energon; Epistemus’s high-pitched screaming, him stumbling backward, coming apart, Adaptus’ cannon having nearly blown him in half; Mortilus coldly disabling the cannon before tearing off the left leg; Solomus cruelly jamming his weapon into his torso before reaching into the hole Epistemus made, gripping his processor, twisting it out and crushing it in his hand. Your hand on his spark casing. There’s energon everywhere. On you, on him, on the ground.

All the while, behind the battle-mad light in Adaptus’ over-bright optics, there’s a well of contempt. He sneers up at you like you’re the one who’s being silly for refusing to agree with him.

Like you and him are somehow above being accountable to the consequences of one’s actions.

Like this is a game. How many deaths could be tallied up to be laid at his feet? (How many deaths can be tallied up at _your_ feet? You’re afraid to think about it. The god war is over, surely. You’ll _have_ to think about it.)

 _I never doubt my course is right,_ he told you a lifetime ago, in an attempt at comfort.

Where did you and I go wrong, you leave unasked.

And then he’s dead.

Dust.

(You all forget: he is a mech like you. He isn’t like your children: he didn’t need a frame to persist in existing if he was determined, to take his poison, and to flee to Luna 1 where you don’t know his allies waited for him to start anew.)

So, standing battered on the battlefield while Solomus limps over to where Epistemus is bleeding out and a blank-opticed Mortilus prepares to enter Adaptus’ death into the public records, you don’t see the attack coming until it’s too late to stop it.

 

*****

 

It is so very like Adaptus to be an awful loser.

To break something just because he had been thwarted from having it.

 

* * *

 

Of everything you will not remember, of everything they too will leave behind them—Solomus’ hand heavy on your small shoulder, Epistemus’ endless chatter, Mortilus’ steadfast, undemanding love—it is Adaptus’ betrayal that you unwillingly take away with you into the rush of white noise, an empty space in the shape of a blow driven straight through your chassis.

One last wound delivered to you.

 

* * *

 

No matter where you turn, the mechs you encounter are confused and dangling at loose ends. They knew there had been a war—the weapons they clenched, the destroyed buildings, the greying, leaking frames, the new craters, the smashed spaceports were proof of that.

But they couldn’t recall which sides they had been fighting on. They couldn’t recall how it ended, exactly. Details had faded into an aching haze.

It must have been a terrible war, they agree: to have left the Titans toppled over, spasming in agony. Hands the size of parking garages claw at their faces. Something was stolen from them. Their attendants scramble over their cityformers.

There had been two moons—but one of them was in orbit and the other was not. Was it destroyed? Was it missing? In fact, they had been preparing to travel to the moon—for a final clean-up mission? Of what? They knew they had god-rulers, Primus, Mortilus, Adaptus, Solomus, and Epistemus—but they don’t know where the god-rulers have vanished off to. Were they wounded? In need of repairs? Why hide from their own kind’s aid? One of the god-rulers was a traitor to Primus and a murderer—a murderer who wanted to bring death to planets that were not Cybertron, who had wanted the guiding hand to be a destroying fist, but which one of them was it? Who turned on his fellows and his kind? Torn down the god-rulers? Primus was silent. Primus was missing. What did the face of Primus look like? What did any of their faces look like? Their followers cannot say. Everybody remembers something slightly different. The temples offer no answers. The Prime drops the sword and kneels in front of the Matrix and begs for a message. Abandoned on its pedestal, the Matrix was silent.

Something has been stolen.

The war must have done this. This loss of direction, this lack of clarity. They are not all dead—so Primus must have won. What is the sense in telling a story where everybody lost?

There had to be a winner, even if there was a cost.

There _had_ to be.

 

*****

 

One of the things you learn early is it’s beyond aggravating to be forgotten so easily. The beastformer you’re talking to while standing in line to take the entrance exam has gotten your name wrong twice in a single conversation after you told him what it was, even after you reminded him, and it shouldn’t! Shouldn’t be getting under your armor so badly! But it does. It’s not something that can be helped, you suppose: there’s nothing memorable _about_ you. You’re scrawny. Unassuming. Your alt mode has nothing going for it. You have no wish for a rebuild.

You’re boring.

“—and I come from the hot spot near the Rust Sea, near Uraya. Say, I don’t think you mentioned it, but now that I’ve told you about me, fair’s fair. Where did you come from, Ring?”

Your anger disintegrates. There’s no point to getting angry at this mech for doing what everybody does. You can’t expect him to be special. That’s unfair. What’s leftover is a feeling that’s frustrating and cold and sad. It clogs up your fuel lines.

You feel like you were born in the wrong order.

“It’s _Rung_.” You correct him. “I don’t remember my beginning,” you say and you leave it at that.

**Author's Note:**

> After Adaptus made that comment about being surprised the LL crew could speak 'his language' and all the rest of the oddities about how physically weird the five original Cybertronians seem to be in general in comparison to the modern generation, this bunny would not leave me alone until I banged it out. Enjoy?


End file.
